This application claims priority under 35 U.S.C. § 119(a) on Patent Application No. 2004-351481 filed in Japan on Dec. 3, 2004, the entire contents of which are hereby incorporated by reference.
The present invention relates to a robot hand that can perform manual procedures and the like by driving a plurality of fingers.
The device disclosed in, for example, JP 2001-287182A is an example of a conventional device of this type. Here, a drive-source motor is provided to joints of the fingers, a belt bridges an output shaft of the motor and a rotating shaft of the joint, and the rotation of the output shaft of the motor is transmitted to the rotating shaft of the joint via the belt, thereby rotating the joint. These motors and belts are provided to each joint in the finger, rotating each joint and thereby bending and extending the finger.
The degree of freedom of the fingers increases if each joint in the fingers is rotated independently. Complex operation of the robot hand is therefore possible, enabling not only grasping operations of objects, but also manipulation of grasped objects.
Furthermore, by providing touch sensors and/or force sensors to fingertips and other portions of the robot hand and detecting the grasping force, etc., of the robot hand, the functionality of the robot hand is improved.
However, while a wide variety of designs have been proposed other than the robot hand disclosed in JP 2001-287182A, the movement of robot hands has thus far failed to achieve that of human hands, which means that there exist many things which can be done with a human hand that cannot be done with a robot hand.
For example, in order to move an object 102 on the palm of a robot hand 101 in the direction of an arrow F while the robot hand 101 holds the object 102 as shown in FIG. 32, the robot hand 101 must be made to perform an extremely complex movement, requiring a further increase in the degree of freedom, making it very difficult to realize such a movement. Additionally, an appropriate friction surface with the object 102 needs to be provided to the palm, which creates new problems in terms of the shape, material, and so on of the palm, rendering immediate realization impossible.
Further, while a method is conceivable in which a plurality of robot hands is prepared and the object on the palm of the robot hand is moved through the aid of another robot hand, further problems for consideration would arise, such as analysis of locations on the object for the other robot hand to come in contact with, recognition technology, technology for making a plurality of robot hands work in concord, and so on, rendering immediate realization impossible.